Christmas

Christmas, wow what an experience that was. Rather interesting to be seeing it from a completely different perspective from usual. Best of all though was that it was really fun! The main challenge was to cook Christmas dinner over the fire, well it wasn't just a challenge it was more a necessity; failure to cook would mean a failure to eat anything decent and that really isn't an option on Christmas day. Cunningly I had decided to roast a venison joint in a pit oven, I say cunningly but I'm not sure whether deciding to do this when I had never used, or even seen a pit, oven in real life before was such a fine example of joined up thinking. I have read about the things and I did read a bit about them in Ray Mears' book on Christmas eve when I was in a book shop killing time as I waited for the return of my wallet. The trick is to dig a pit, build a fire in it and then add some big flat stones. Once the stones are heated through the fire is removed leaving behind a healthy pile of hot embers and the stones which are covered with a thin layer of earth, then comes the food wrapped in leaves, then another thin layer of earth followed by a large hot stone and then the whole lot is buried and left until the food is cooked. What could possibly go wrong?I had rekindled the fire from the previous night to make breakfast, tea, toast and mince pies so I transferred it to the pit. The advantage to this is that the sticks I was using could be leant up against the side of the pit rather than lain flat thus encouraging the flames to spread upwards; soon I had a roaring blaze going. There was a small problem when it came to large flat stones though. Lewknor soil yields a healthy crop of both chalk and flint whilst both stones have their uses neither appear to be available in either 'large' or 'flat'. Chalk appears to be to be rather porous and I assume that it would not therefore hold heat for very long. Flint is very hard and I thought this would make the perfect heat source for the oven but over Dinner a couple of days earlier my Brother in Law told me that Flint is prone to explode when heated. This soon got turned into my jugular being severed by a piece of flying flint and then collapsing face first into the fire; the post mortem concluding I had decided to cook myself. I decided against using flint. Fortunatly I had aquired two large pieces of cast iron that looked as though they maybe useful so one of those was put into the bottom of the pit before the fire was built up and the other was leant against the side ready to be tipped onto the food once suitably heated.


Thats all I have time for today I'm afraid - there should be some more by Tuesday.